Premiere Pro CC 'versus' Final Cut

Glen,

Give us the specs of that MacBook Pro.

Thanks,
Kevin

Fascinating how different everyone's working patterns and behaviors are.

Just saw a very good review of the new Apple XDR display from a link posted on the LGG forum, by Vincent Teoh. Well performed, using a good tone generator and a Klein spectro device for measuring ... and properly testing for color dimming sections and behavior along with actual in-use contrast ratios. Checking DeltaE behavior, gammas, all the proper pro profile checks. And all done for several uses from SDR to HDR.

And yea, even with the 'new' fixes in the Mac OS for that monitor ... darks blooming is still way out of control, contrast ratio is not nearly adequate for HDR reference monitoring, but hey ... as long as the scene is overall pretty bright, it mostly works. You just cannot count on your shadows and blacks to be ... anything. They can 'move' so much depending on surrounding tonality. Not at all comparable to the high-end Sony rig that Apple chose to compare it to.

But I saw something very interesting in the screen-shots of the various settings for that monitor that you must make through the computer's OS, as there are no controls or settings available on the monitor whatever. A data point I've not been able to find elsewhere.

I've written an article and a tutorial for MixingLight on the color management of Premiere ... and including on Macs with the Retina monitors using Apple's odd Display-P3 color space. I hunted all over for the data on that 'space' ... and what is available says P3 primaries, D65 white point, "sRGB gamma" (which is ... unhelpful) ... and nothing about brightness. But the monitors clearly are fairly bright for white point.

In the screen-grabs of the color space/display options for the XDR monitor, there was an entry for "Apple Display-P3 (500 nits)".

Woa! That's SO far outta the park for pro video ... unless you're HDR, pro video is nearly all video sRGB primaries, Rec.709 including both the camera transform and display transform functions, gamma 2.4 and brightness 100 nits.

If you work within that pro Rec.709 setup, your work will look relatively the same as all other professionally produced media on any one viewer's system.

But there are plenty of Retina users running the Display-P3 "native" space of their monitors ... and then wondering why Premiere isn't working correctly on their machines, and why exports look so different on varying machines and viewing apps.

The Apple ColorSync utility is supposed to remap things on the "standard" Retina monitors for tagged images being viewed ... but that utility sees "Rec.709" and attempts to apply the color primaries change, only applies the camera transform function but does not apply the required display transform function, and the "RGB gamma" used then effectively works out to a slightly off-kilter 1.96 ... and it doesn't seem to match the 100 nits brightness either, perhaps leaving the image closer to the 500 nits 'native' spec.

Yea, that doesn't work so well. Way off standards.

The other very interesting thing about the review of the XDR monitor ... was that for SDR work, it came out nearly spot-on for following the proper Rec.709/Bt.1886 standards! Including both a white point brightness of 97.? nits, and a gamma of 2.35.

So ... the Retina's are difficult to get to a proper view of SDR material, but ... the XDR is pretty darn good at SDR, much better than a Retina ... but nowhere near good enough for a Reference monitor for HDR material.

Though he thought it might work ok for viewing much HDR material.

As a PC user, I do wish Apple made FinalCutX available for other OSs. It would be nice to work with it, and see how it feels. But ... Apple being Apple, ain't gonna happen. Sigh.

Neil

Hi GlenT,

Sorry for your negative experience. I think you do have to come into the Premiere Pro realm with just a little advanced knowledge.

The magnetic timeline makes Premiere Pro a little harder to manage if you are not used to having that. That said, Premiere Pro Rush does have that kind of Timeline. Personally, I'm used to a standard timeline and am used to it. It probably takes some time to get used to coming from FCP X.

Another thing you mentioned is your non-performant footage. FCP X will create proxies and/or transcode for you in the background. You can do that too in Premiere Pro, you just have to enable it before importing.

If you have any other specific concerns, please let me know.

Thanks,
Kevin

Moved to videolounge forum

I use both and they are both great programs. Apple shines on a Mac because it was written for and by Apple. Adobe shines in workflow. Workflow because they own all the main software: Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects. (And yes I can use all these in the Apple workflow but every single one needs extra work to get into FCX.) With Adobe, all my files are native which makes fixes that much easier. One of the best workflows is starting in Premiere then turn it into After Effects if I need be. Apple and Motion do not work that way, though the Motion effects/generators process is very nice. One of my favorite process, is timing out my storyline in Premiere, then turning each scene into After Effects to animate. Final rendering and lowerthirds end up being controlled by Premiere. I can no do that workflow in Apple. I use both but I use Adobe more. Use what you like better. I do.